Cool fact. Pasco wireless force probes and carts only work with the hooks they came with. A longer threaded hook interferes w/the flex of the strain gauge and prevents them from being calibrated. The one on the right is correct #ITeachPhysics

Thermal images of a ballistic pendulum before & after catching a ball. The after image shows a hot spot where the ball interacted with the catcher part of the pendulum

We had three snow days and I came back to school to find this in the office fridge. Apparently you have to open the door regularly to prevent freezing.

We’re going to have fancy, custom medals at science fair this year.

My calc-based class did my replacement for the toilet paper challenge yesterday. Find the ratio of distances for a ring and disk to hit the end of the ramp at the same time. I ran into trouble w/ kids looking up the TP Challenge answer online & developed this. #ITeachPhysics 🎢

Today my classes will measure the coefficient of rolling friction of a Pasco SmartCart. I didn't save any real data from last year but here's a fake graph similar to what they'll need to make #iteachphysics 🎢

Here’s a heavily processed long exposure photo of last night’s aurora from Hot Springs. Barely visible to the unaided eye over the casino lights.

What do you think #iteachphysics. Is it time for fresh carbon paper for my projectile motion labs? 🎢

Bluesky now has over 10 million users, and I was #2,352,210!

During my annual summer office purge I found this in an old binder. Data from a small radio telescope at Green Bank I took in ‘94 at a workshop. It’s M87 in the 1370 to 1440 MHz band.

I’m taking advantage of the lack of students to try my hand at some sol-gel fabrication. Tomorrow I’ll try to coat some slides with this sol.

In other Arkansas weather news, we had a halo around the sun for a bit today.